San Jose joins other major cities in hiking minimum wage

Starting Monday, the minimum wage in San Jose will be $10. Automatic annual increases will be pegged to inflation.

California's minimum wage has been $8 since 2008.

A bill in Congress would raise the national minimum wage, which has been $7.25 since 2009, to $10.10 by 2015 with automatic inflation adjustments.

Most states don't allow individual cities to set their own minimum wages, and only a handful of others have done so: Santa Fe and Albuquerque, N.M.; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco. The San Francisco minimum wage, adopted in 2003 and also indexed to inflation, is now $10.55, the highest in the nation.

San Jose's minimum wage law applies to most employers in the city and to some outside the city limits as well. Employers that maintain a facility in San Jose or are subject to the city's business tax are required to comply with the ordinance. Employees who perform at least two hours or more of work per week in San Jose, even if their employers are based outside the city limits, are covered by the minimum wage ordinance. The program will be enforced on a complaint-basis, as is the current state minimum wage.